Feb 27, 2012

This is my first time at the MWC, and after spending the entire first day of the event walking around the endless technology booths I’m really impressed with it.

Android is dominating this event. Many of the technologies demonstrated here require “low level” access and infrastructure tweaks. Android is the perfect platform to build and demonstrate these kinds of capabilities.

But it’s not just that. Walking around the different halls, it’s really fascinating to see how big and live those Android areas are; first, there is the Android official area (Google). It’s massive, there are tons of fancy demonstrations, games, apps, devices. You can get Android-shaped Ice-Cream Sandwiches there, grab your own copy of an Android puppet, and more.

To emphasis the Android strength, there is also an impressive Sushi-style moving track with an endless list of Android models. An impressive Android parade.

This is only one of the many places you will see Android in.

Checking the Motorola area, Samsung, HTC, and others – they are all Android-only, no other OS is being presented. Apple is not here (as in every year) and there is barely any competition: I haven’t seen BlackBerry anywhere around, and Microsoft’s booth looks small and empty. There is nothing new over there (besides that simple looking Nokia Lumia smartphone), there are very few visitors, and - It is the only place where you find Windows Phone devices. All the WP7 devices manufacturers seem to hide it. You won’t find any WP7 devices in the HTC area, nor in the gigantic Samsung mini-city that is capturing half of the hall. What does that mean? Nothing new I’m afraid, but it is just another proof to the fact WP7 is simply not in the game.

Motorola is promoting the new Razr with the possibility to connect it to a Lapdock. When the smartphone is connected to the Lapdock, the user experience changes from a smartphone view to a “webtop” experience. There have been some improvements to the webtop UI but I was not impressed with the results – more details soon.

Samsung is without a doubt the biggest Android player at the moment. It also has the biggest exhibitor area in MWC this year, presenting the new Galaxy Note (in new size and shape). I played with it for a while and I think it’s nice, but as usual, still lacking: it’s not running Android 4.0, it has some bugs, and the entire experience is not smooth enough…